With Every Broken Bone, I Swear I Lived
by StitchAndRepair
Summary: The cops leave, the bar closes and still he sits there. Still, silent, with Ian a comforting presence beside him. He looks around and sees the flickering glow of the street lights, the snow littering the ground, turned brown and mushy from footprints. He sees life continuing around him, but it's all different now. Or maybe he is. Maybe this is what Ian has been talking about.


Mickey Milkovich - With every broken bone, I swear I lived.

He's six years old and his father is a giant. He's tall and scary and sometimes Mickey wishes he had a beanstalk like Jack did in the books so that he could climb higher and higher until he was away from the giant, until he was the giant. From the top of a beanstalk his dad would look tiny. An ant. So small that it would be foolish for Mickey to be afraid of him.

His dad yells at lot, slams his older brothers into walls and cupboards and last month he broke Iggy's collarbone. Mickey sees his sister, so small and fragile despite the bruises she sometimes gives him. He sees her cowering in her bed, covering her ears with tears streaking her face and he wishes he was better than Jack, better than a beanstalk or magic beans.

He wishes he was Superman. He wishes he was a bird with wings. He wishes he was an angel, a warrior of God.

He climbs to the top of the shed in the back yard, finally manages it after three attempts and a boost from Mandy. He doesn't tell her, but he's going to fly. He's going to jump and he's going to grow wings and he's going to take them away. Both of them.

He doesn't tell her, but he's doing it for her.

_"You can do it Mickey"_

With his sisters words and her childish belief in him, he jumps.

He falls.

He breaks his arm and he never gets to fly.

#

He is seven years old and his mother is sick. He doesn't know what's wrong with her, but she doesn't move from the sofa and her eyes won't open all the way. She just gurgles, reaches for him with a limp hand and cold fingers.

Terry catches him on the phone. The teachers at school always tell him that that is what he is supposed to do, '_dial 911 and ask for an ambulance'_ but his dad always says not to. He says that the police are too nosey and that_ 'our business is our own fucking business'_.

But Mickey knows that his mom is sick, she needs a doctor and she's not going to get better and Terry would never call one.

He doesn't get a chance to say it, but he does it for her. Terry finds him with the phone to his ear, asking for an ambulance. Terry snatches the phone away and smashes it against the wall. He yells until his face turns red, blue veins swelling and poking up out of the skin of his neck and Mickey can't bring himself to look away. Terry pushes and shoves and screams until Mickey falls down. Terry towers above him, the giant stood over Jack. Terry kicks and he punches and he snarls and sneers until Mickey sees spots in front of his eyes and his vision is streaked with red. There is blood. All of it his. Terry stomps on his leg until Mickey hears it break. He refuses to cry out until Terry disappears.

His aunt turns up ten minutes later, arms weighed down with bags from Walmart and she tuts at the sight of him. She cleans him up, patches up his cuts and bruises and tells him to get his story straight.

The ambulance arrives and takes his mom and she turns out okay. They take him and he tells them that he fell face first into the pavement after jumping from the shed trying to be Superman. They laugh like they believe him, despite the concern in their eyes, and make him promise to never do it again.

#

He is nine years old and the wind whips past him and his eyes water as he zooms down the concrete hill.

He is on his first ever skateboard and he is on top of the world.

Iggy found the skateboard in a dumpster and screwed the wheels on as tight as he could and chucked it at Mickey that morning.

_"Happy birthday, asswipe"_

Mickey rides until his legs shake and the wheels come lose.

He hits an old tree stump and skins his knees.

He cracks his collarbone and turns the skin of his arms and face raw, but for a moment he is flying.

#

He is eleven years old and full of fear.

He's frozen as James' boot slams against his chest. His nose is bloody and the pain is sharp and throbbing in the way a broken bone always is.

It's his first ever fight against someone outside of his family and he's scared. He loses badly, barely gets a swing of his fist in before the kid pummels him to the ground and scrapes his face against the gravel.

_"Eat shit, dickhead."_

The boy is fourteen and tougher than Mickey was. He is stronger but Mickey doesn't want to give up. He kicks out until he is free and he spits and yells and throws himself forward until Iggy's arms circle his waist and pull him away.

He loses the fight.

But back home his brothers set his nose and toasts him with a beer and they call him 'Pitbull' for a month, until his mom forces him into the bath and he comes out dirt free and pale skinned. The only color on him comes in the form of bruises; blue and purple smudges, yellowing at the edges.

He gets called 'Milky' after that and he pretends that he hates it.

#

He is fourteen and his wrist twists and snaps under the weight of his own body.

Robert swings his fist and knocks him down. Mickey falls backwards but his anger is too much, too intense.

He cradles his wrist to his chest and throws himself forward. His head collides with Robert's and Robert goes down and Mickey is left standing with a broken wrist and a pain hanging heavy in his heart. He fights back the rush of tears that springs to his eyes and he walks away.

Robert O' Sullivan was caught with his mouth round another guy's cock. He had stood tall and spat the boy's come on the ground beside the teacher's feet and he didn't care.

_"I'm gay and I'm proud"_

He had yelled it loud enough for half the school to hear, the words echoing around the boy's toilets at the school and out into the hallway.

For days after that Robert had glared at everyone that sneered at him. He walked down the halls with his head held high as people threatened him and spat at him. He had held eye contact with everyone that tried to intimidate him.

He was brave in every way that Mickey was scared.

Mickey doesn't say it, but he does it for his dad. He broke his wrist and crushed Robert's pride to make his dad happy and proud. He does it to squash every dark look that crosses his dad's face when he sees Mickey's eyes linger a second too long on the TV when a half-naked guy is sprawled across his bed or changing his shirt. He does it to bury every hammering beat of his heart when he presses his fingers into his ass and comes to the image of abs and biceps and rock hard muscle weighing him down, pressing into him from behind.

He does it because Robert is everything he could never be.

#

He is nineteen, in a crowded room with his dad, his wife, his son. His boyfriend.

_"I'm done. I don't have any interest in being your mistress anymore"_

Mickey is standing on the edge of a cliff, torn between staying in one hell - a hell with Terry, a hell full of secrets and chains that keep him tied down, keep him hidden away and alone - and falling down into another one. Because that's what it'll be after all this. A new layer of hell; with homophobic slurs and a lifetime of checking over his shoulder. All his secrets laid to bare, everyone knowing exactly where his weaknesses lay.

It'll be scary and terrifying and exhilarating.

And there's Ian - standing at the door, his back to him, ready to leave. Once again. His chest aches and he can already feel hole inside of him grow even wider. The hold that had formed the last time Ian had left - the last time he let Ian leave. The edges inside of him splitting open even further, jagged and raw and aching. He can already feel his skin start to itch with the need to bandage the wound, stitch it up with alcohol and pills and anything to make him forget. Ian glanced back at him, just for a second, and Mickey didn't even hesitate.

He didn't say it, but he did it for them. For Ian and every damn thing he felt for him. He did it for every bad word he had ever said, he did it for the way his skin came alive under Ian's fingers. He did it for Ian and the way he made him feel. He did it for him. He did it for the two of them. Together.

He fell.

_"I'm fucking gay."_

He fell headfirst into the terrifying new layer of hell - except he knew it wasn't. It wasn't hell at all.

Because he's suffered through hell. Months without Ian, months all alone - torn apart every single day. His wife's belly swelling more and more while he sunk further, smaller and smaller. He's suffered through hell with Terry, with years of being told that everything he liked was wrong, everything that he wanted was sick and twisted and gross. He has been through hell. And he has no intentions of going back. "A big ol' 'mo" His heart feels too small in his chest and he can't breathe and for a moment, there's nothing. But then his dad is up, face contorted in anger and disgust and hatred. There's blood. His blood. Terry's blood. Ian's.

_"And as for you, you're free to go"_

The cops leave, the bar closes and still he sits there. Still, silent, with Ian a comforting presence beside him. He looks around and sees the flickering glow of the street lights, the snow littering the ground, turned brown and mushy from footprints. He sees life continuing around him, but it's all different now. Or maybe he is. Maybe this is what Ian has been talking about; what he showed him in the club; what he's been trying to show him for years. It's not quite acceptance, but it's definitely a few steps closer. He's laughing, despite the silence. His eyes are watering and the hairs of his arms are stood to attention and he can't stop. He's laughing and Ian is laughing with him. Freely, loudly, breathlessly.

He's six years old again; Superman jumping off the shed trying to prove that he can fly. Except this time he doesn't break his arm.

He gets away with a cracked tooth and a click in his jaw that won't go away, not even years later when his knees ache with age and his hair has started to grey.

One broken knuckle and a gash across his nose.

He's made it.

He's flying.

He's free.

_"You're a fucking dick"_

Ian just grins at him, kisses his hair.

No. No, it's not hell at all.


End file.
